The problem behind Common Core, or as Mike O rightfully calls the misuse of Common Core, is that all we have are rumors.  If the rumors are true we have a disaster in the making.  Well, the rumors are true and the test that was turned in to a British Paper (excellent move) proves it.

According to the newspaper that has seen the test,

It’s full of long, dense, off-the-wall nonfiction passages on making wind tunnels, soil formation and studying whales. There are two short stories, both set overseas. And there’s a vague selection from a poem about loneliness that students must interpret before choosing among four answers that contain two arguably correct selections.

Students got 90 minutes to complete the 32-page test, which contained 42 questions based on six written passages.

The News asked testing experts, teachers and parents to analyze the test, which state and city education officials have kept under lock and key. Everyone who saw it was left dumbfounded by the killer questions.

“You might as well just put ‘failure to students’ at the top of the exam,” said Tracy Woodall, a stay-at-home mom whose son is a fifth-grader at Public School 1 in the Bronx. “There’s no way they’re going to pass this.”

The questions on the fifth-grade reading test, designed to test comprehension, were enough to stump a city high-school teacher who reviewed it.

“Have these students had an opportunity to build up to that complexity? The answer is no,” said the teacher, who asked for anonymity for fear of getting sacked. “This test is coming at them like an anvil to their face.”

Aaron Pallas, a testing expert at Columbia University, ran the new fifth-grade exam though a computer analysis program and found that it was actually calibrated for the “middle of sixth grade.”  Numerous families boycotted the new exams, and the national teachers union boss called for a moratorium on consequences from the high-stakes tests until they’re better-understood.

We are killing education in America by purposefully making the test so they make children fail, and then use that to fire teachers and close schools because their test results are so poor.